Dispute Between Little Rock Lawyers Leads to Lawsuit Over Unpaid Attorney Fees

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Little Rock attorney Patrick Benca is hauling his former law partners into court, saying they conspired to take fees he earned.

The dispute started when Benca was at the McDaniel Wolff & Benca law firm in Little Rock, which opened in 2020.

Benca’s 57-page lawsuit, filed last month in Pulaski County Circuit Court, claims that the firm’s policies guaranteed that lawyers who secured a client would get 20% of that client’s attorneys fees no matter who handled the case.

Benca said that he secured a personal injury case that could have brought in millions. It involved a pickup truck hitting the back of a logging truck in 2021.

Benca projected he might reap up to $300,000.

But Dustin McDaniel, the former Arkansas attorney general and a member of the firm at the time, became a co-counsel with his brother, Brett McDaniel, an attorney in Jonesboro, the lawsuit said.

Meanwhile, beginning in the late summer of 2021, the relationship between the partners began deteriorating, “specifically between Benca and Dustin,” the suit said.

Benca left the firm in 2022, but signed a “redemption agreement” that he said stipulated that his exit wouldn’t affect the origination fees he expected in the accident case and two others cases.

But when it came time to collect on the logging case, which was settled in November, Benca never received his fees, the suit says.

His former partners said the logging accident lawsuit wasn’t a McDaniel Wolff & Benca case because no contract existed between the plaintiff and MWB.

Benca named the McDaniel brothers, his former law partner Vincent Ward of Little Rock and the law firm of McDaniel Wolff of Little Rock as defendants. Benca is seeking 20% of the total attorneys fees earned in the logging case and other damages.

Benca is being represented by Lion Legal Services of North Little Rock, his current firm.

Brett McDaniel, through his attorney Spence Fricke of the Barber Law Firm, declined to comment. Ward and McDaniel Wolff said in a recent court filing that the law firm doesn’t owe Benca money under the redemption agreement. Ward and the law firm asked the case be moved to arbitration.

Ward said in an affidavit filed in the case that the McDaniel Wolff firm never collected a fee in the logging case.

In a statement to Whispers, Dustin McDaniel’s attorney, Eric Gribble of Fuqua Campbell of Little Rock, said: “We will seek dismissal and other relief, as this lawsuit appears to be wholly without merit. Furthermore, Dustin McDaniel was not involved at all in the underlying case, was never paid a fee in that matter, and should not have been named in this case.”

Stay tuned.